


Who Said You Can't go Back?

by RectifiedPear



Category: Lady and the Tramp (1955)
Genre: Age Difference, Grown Up, M/M, Overprotective Parent, Post-Canon, Scamp is an adult
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-06 02:26:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17931059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RectifiedPear/pseuds/RectifiedPear
Summary: The Tramp didn't handle Scamp not staying a house dog, he had hoped his son had learned a lesson. In reality, Scamp had, to live between worlds, and use both to his advantage. With a desire to make his dad mad, after being jumped too often by an aggressive father, Scamp continues his antics, hoping to one day find the right things to push his dad's buttons with.





	Who Said You Can't go Back?

**Author's Note:**

> I caught either strep throat or the flu, go figure. Been sleeping a lot.  
> Then I had projects to get set up for the next two months, which might keep me somewhat occupied.  
> Can't keep me down too long, though.

Scamp stretched his long legs and pranced along the house, heading toward the door,l he gripped the steel knob in his teeth and twisted his head until he heard a _click_. Satisfied, he pulled it open and made his way outside, one hind leg pushing the door shut. _Click!_ It went once more. He carried on.

Two years of the humans trying to keep him home and him butting heads with his dad had ended in a miserable mess of disagreements and severed bonds. His mother loved him, told him so long as he came home safe, he could go where he pleased, his father looked everywhere now, but at him. He was huffy, grumbly, and a mess of disapproval whenever mud tracked in, acting as if Scamp's life was a foreign middle finger to how it was meant to be.

His sisters were no longer around to disapprove, they'd sought humans out and clung to them, ignoring both mother and father's urging to return home. Before long, Jim Dear and Darling had found them being happier with those people, and relented when none of the three could do more than sulk in the large house. Angel had met Aunt Sarah, and hit it off somehow with Si and Am, the woman was so enamored with the Pomeranian she'd all but stolen her. There was no arguing with her. Even if his mom's stories of how the Aunt was a monster were true, Angel was happily blending in among two spoiled Siamese cats. They seemed to desire to rub this in, but it unnerved him little. They'd had disagreements on par with those he'd had with his father.

And he'd had the place to himself. The Tramp was cozied up to his mom, watching T.V with Jim Dear, Darling was always feeding the baby. Scamp vanished for a whole night, only got noticed by his parents. Then did it for three days. The humans did not care, they'd had basically free range, but now he was testing time limits. A week seemed to be pushing it, so Scamp began doing nights, sometimes two in a row.

He walked the street, tags making catchers overlook him, and large build making only the biggest of dogs approach. Unless they were female, then they flirted. He was a fluffier-eared Tramp to them, with a longer coat and softer eyes. They crooned he could definitely be their dog. Inexperience had blossomed into experience. Angel had known once, how to talk more street than he could, but now, he could speak like his old man and then some. 

Today was gloomy, a reek of chemicals fogging from chimneys and birds making noise over things in ditches. He stepped off the lawn and carried along his route. It was a fairly long route, one where he marked over scents and smiled at dogs. Some faces he knew, some were the young of past friends once upon a time. A tail wag or two and he'd carry on walking.

He had found the junkyard abandoned, Buster gone, the heap only added onto, within the second misadventure. He had thought he could choose one or the other, and been sorely wrong. He was meant to walk both paths. Indoors bored him over too long, and outdoors did as well. He found his footing was between the worlds. An indoor dog who ran the street, but still slept among humans.

Fishing through the latest dumped trash, he found cans with remnants of things his humans never shared. They said it was people food only. Blah, blah, blah. Humans always kept the best food for themselves. Chicken bones crunched between his jaws and marrow filled his mouth as he remembered trying to understand why Angel hadn't liked this life.

It was hard, sure, maybe because she was a small dog, and was done growing? He couldn't tell really, but he was willing to bet she only hated it because she was so dang small. A bigger dog like him could run, could pace, could _live_ and _breathe_ out here.

The streets aren't his home, nor is the house, and he treads the line like dogs on the screen tread rope alongside humans on weird bikes. His father's anger has him snap the bones into splinters, then crush those splinters into a mash. Bits get stuck between his teeth as he licks his mouth and contemplates where he'll walk next.

He avoids his home during the day. The humans are gone, their barking doesn't rouse the neighbors – they're usually gone. His father goes at him and tries to throw reality at him, that he's a house pet, that this life will one day cost him his own. He's not a pup. He's the son of The Tramp, he's learned!

“I'll show him.” He bites through the picked clean ribs, crunches his teeth into a breast bone and gnashes the scraps into nothing but pulp that slides into his stomach. _Not a pup no more. I'm a dog._

On the third circle around the place, the sun droops low, the entertainment of rolling shredded old balls and gnawing shoes and old weathered hats found in garbage piles loses its shine, he drifts to naps, to climbing dangerous heaps and playing pretend.

The Tramp's son rules this garbage pile, dozens of dogs follow his every bark, his tail is looked upon as the nicest one around, he's strong, he's smart, the only dog who opens doors and carries garbage so humans see him as 'helpful', Scamp is grand and all of them swoon at his tricks. He has a way of opening latches and undoing fastens. He's bold, he's brave, he's –

A yawn snaps him from it, he stretches, body making pleasant sounds as it arches and his toes splay. He doesn't miss his short puppy legs at all. Leaping down from the half of a piano topped with a cushion from a sofa, he does a second stretch and shakes the tiredness from his legs.

Two stray cats start to fight to the left of him, having been yowling upon a fence and likely debating territory, he shoots them a look as they fling themselves at one another, the momentum sending them crashing off the picket fence and into garbage. There's cans and rattling, and tufts of fur. Scamp doesn't wait, he walks along. 

The darkness slips along, a few inches of orange and red casting light among the house tops and long shadows. He smells a few familiar faces, females, males, and rounds a corner. A dog across the street raises its head, bare neck straightening as it cocks its head to the side and looks upon him. 

Scamp's chest shudders, his mouth goes dry. The cocky thoughts and rehearsed retorts to throw into his father's face come morning stop looping, there's a silence. He feels his breath catch and lock into his chest as his brown eyes meet brown eyes he hasn't seen in forever. Large paws tense, burying into the dirt road as half-lifted, floppy ears swivel. Teeth flash, then a pause. Scamp watches the dog approach him, heart hammering and feet refusing to move him away from the spot. He's stuck like ice and snow to wet dirt. The street is empty of humans. Not a light of a vehicle, not a person walking home. 

He can't find himself in anywhere besides the past, a past so far behind him that he can't shake himself from how small he feels. Despite no longer being that small.

“Well, well.” Buster hums, his posture casual, but his face is surprised, amazed. “If it isn't Scamparooni. It's been awhile.”

The thrum of his own pulse is a beating mess of a hammer, nailing in over and over that he's in trouble. He's in danger. He's staring the scariest dog he knew as a puppy right in the eye. Gaze not shifting or pulling away as Buster circles him. He sniffs him a few times, Scamp doesn't dare turn his attention from the mix of rottweiler and doberman. He can only remember the past.

“A long time.” Buster breathes, and Scamp feels a quiver run up his legs.

He can feel his hackles raising, his jaw tensing. There's two years of time between then and now, but it's fresh and it's raw. He won't back down, he's his dad's size now. A bit more fur, a bit more roundedness, but he's obviously a match for The Tramp, and he's suspected that between them was always something. Something that stopped Buster from straight on attacking his dad. 

Buster seemed to circle him now, muscles rippling under fur. The mix had gained new scars, he could tell. A few over his muzzle, some along his legs. He wondered if that was from what he'd done. He hopes it was, he hopes despite everything, that he left those marks on Buster. Silently, with his eyes, he dares him to have a go at him, to make any movement towards him. He'll give him more scars, and then he'll book it.

His opponent makes no such moves, instead chuckling to himself and stopping his circling. He moves to stand beside him, laughing again.

“W-what's so funny?” He pushes his stutter from his voice, paws kneading soil and rock. 

“Ya look a lot like him, kid, but your face, back there, heck, still... Like I'm a ghost. Ya really thought I was dead or somethin' from you missing and burying me in trash?” He cracks another fit of laughter, as if the fear Scamp has is a grand joke for him.

_I'm not some joke._

He pushes his tension into his legs, ready to bolt, or to scratch, or to kick at any moment. Gaze raised, hackles prickling the back of his neck, he locks Buster in eye contact and pushes him with a shoulder. “Let me pass.” 

“By all means.”

Buster's compliance stinks of a trap, whatever rotation upon his feet Scamp was about to do, is halted. The black and tan male is shot a look, one that tells him Scamp's not buying it. “This stinks of cat piss.”  
“What a mouth you've got on you.”

“I'm not a pup.”

Pulling his head back to take another scan over him, the male nods. “No. You certainly are not.”

Scamp bares his teeth.

“What's your old man up to nowadays, k- street dog?” He does a quick look about, as if he expects them to be on some family outing. For Tramp to come walking up with their people toting the other end of the leash or some such thing. “He ain't with you?”

It's his turn to laugh, the gray male can't imagine his dad wanting anything to do with this life. He's so enamored with his mother and that world of being among humans and having them pet and bathe him, he's forgotten the way he once was.

“As if! My dad wouldn't be caught dead out here anymore, he's too happy having the human toddler rub his grimy hands on his ears. Hell, he can't even stomach me being out here.”

One of Buster's paws moves back, as if he just stepped into some bodily excrement and needs to shake it free. Scamp's fear abates back some, watching his once puphood bully become repulsed and shocked. This is not what he predicted. This is nothing like he foresaw.

 _I looked up to you once._ Deep down, he still did, Buster had been right in ways, an asshole, but he'd had his moments. 

“That so?”

Scamp chose then to try. Moving past Buster, and daring to turn his back on the dog. When no growls came, no pinch of teeth, no lunging, he dared relax and begin to walk.  
It was a shock to find he was not being attacked by the larger male. Buster had meant it when he'd said the mutt could pass. Why had he allowed that? Didn't he hate Scamp? Wasn't those scars physical reminders of all the wrongs he'd done to Buster?

Turning to look behind him, he found Buster was walking not far behind him. The anger was not there. He should have found to idea of Buster on his tail wrong, instead he slowed his pace and eyed him sideways.

“What?” 

“What're ya doing out here anyway, Scampsky?”

He gave a great roll of his eyes, floppy ears swinging to and fro as he shook his head. “Pissing my old man off.”

“Oh really?”

 _What's the harm in telling him?_ “I can't stand living indoors for long, so I decided to go back to the streets again. When he started catching me, he got real mad.”

Buster took this in stride, nodding like it all made a lot of sense. A sideways look made Scamp realize there was a silent question lingering his way: _Hows Angel feel about that?_

“It's just me, my mom, and my dad. Angel got along with someone in the people's family, so they took her in, my sisters left home, so on. Now he's treating me like I'll leave and never come back. The humans don't care, I'm not stupid. He's such a –“

“Boring stick-in-the-mud. Yeah. He's been that way since he got with your mom.”

There was an acid beneath the tone, a jealousy. Scamp's gaze dropped down, to those large paws. He remembers being smaller, the impressiveness of those paws. The strength in the male's jaws. How he'd grabbed Scamp's collar. A shake or two, and he was cast aside, collar-less. He'd come back for it. It was not the same as the one he wore now, new tags, a nicer green. He rose his eyes. “Yeah, he's up her ass, in mad love with her. But hot pissed at me every chance he gets.” No response comes, he shrugs. “When the humans are gone, during the day, he starts fights, I finish them.”

A slight grin crosses the rottweiler doberman mix's muzzle.

 _He left you. He betrayed you._ He was a perfect penance, the last child of his dad's living with him, his only son. Yet Buster made no move to go at him, his gaze trailed along his shoulders and down his back to the short tail, and then back to that long mouth and those sharp teeth. 

For awhile there was nothing said. Scamp walked leisurely, the male knew where there lived, so there was no point in not walking towards home, but he felt less of a need to get there soon. As he rounded a bend, and crossed another street, Buster seemed to pause, then almost find something funny in walking beside him. 

Thinking on it, Scamp found it funny in his own way, he was matching stride with someone he'd thought terrible or bad. He laughter, and it was contagious, sweeping to Buster. Two different sounding doggish laughs carried along the streets as they moved.

“He'd be so mad if he could see this.” Scamp said, feeling euphoric. He wasn't used to having company.

“I bet. But know what would make him even more steamed?”

A dozen possibilities danced in his mind. Running away. Bringing Buster home with him. So many things that would send his dad's gaze into a red fury and start a fight. But it was as Scamp's eyes lingered upon Buster longer, his mind working finally, he couldn't think of anything quite that impactful. But he definitely wanted to. It moved within him, an urge to really make his dad mad.

“What?”

“Oh come on now.” He says, smiling. “Think about it for awhile. He doesn't like you, he doesn't like me no more...”

The acid in those words pull Scamp along, dragging him to press against Buster's side and think. “You seem to have changed out here.” He's still thinking through how to piss off his father, he doesn't want to beg or pry for the answer, he wants to think it up on his own.

“Not really. Just got lonely.” Buster lets a long shrug roll down his shoulders and into his haunches. “Not the first time, but my rep's been shot since everything. Those junkyard dogs weren't around all that long.”

“They change.” Scamp replied.

He'd seen it himself with his father, an ex-street dog. Surely every street dog was the same. Eyeing Buster, he could see he'd changed. _It's a better change, though._ Unlike his dad, Buster was a grinning mouth of teeth, a supporting tone of voice. _He used to be that too, before._  
In fact, he'd dare say things had been great until his dad had barged in. Wounded pride all over the place, Buster had lashed out, the exchanges were messy, aggressive. His dad had barely stepped back from grabbing Scamp and kicking Buster in the teeth. It had been the most aggressive and caring his father had ever been, and it was over someone who he'd ditched for Scamp's mother. If not for his dad, would he have even been harmed by Buster?

Looking at the dog again, he had to question himself. Was he really on the side of someone who'd sent him to the pound out of spite? _Spite to hurt your dad._ Was – had any of Buster's anger even been over Angel? Or had it all been because The Tramp had gone after his latest member and made everything worse? _”That's my boy!”_ His dad had encouraged it, encouraged and pushed for him to be a dog who actively harmed another! Buster bore scars that Scamp had left, but with his father's guidance. Those were Tramp's claw marks upon his muzzle and leg, embodied into wood and glass and fallen atop the mutt before he'd been lead home by his dear old dad.

“Somethin' wrong?” Buster asked.

Scamp pulled from his thoughts. He'd sat down in an abandoned lot and Buster had sat beside him. There was a weird feeling in seeing the other dog had not continued walking or strayed off, merely sat down, waiting for him to come forth from his reverie. Scamp took it with a tail wag and a smile, floppy ears wrapping around his throat as he turned his head to look upon Buster with an apologetic grin.

“Is there?” he responded.

“Nothin' wrong here.” He gave a shark's grin. “You seem like you're troubled. Your dad really turn into a slave driver like that?”

He pulls a face and lets out a long, tired sigh. “Yep. Pop's off his rocker and over the top crazy when it comes to the fact I wanna roam the roads.”

“Such a shame.” 

Buster had not ceased to smile and grin, he was optimistic and upbeat. Something Scamp did not expect from a dog left for dead. _It's as if he's not the same dog._ Same voice, same attitude, knew his dad, had rippling muscles as he always had. _Did over a year really change you this much?_ He'd been wary of one day meeting Buster again, assuming the dog would rip more than his collar off, but in this situation, he was starting to warm up to his company, pressing a shoulder to Buster's side, he pushed himself up to his feet.

“So.”

“So?” Buster's brows knit together.

Scamp rolled the tension from his back and into his paws. “How do I _really_ piss my dad off?” Each toe trembled into hard ground and scratched along the surface, hooking into it. 

“Well, Scampsky.” His tone jovial as he leaned back. “He sure did hate when ya were little and hung around me.” 

He can't argue, possibly the maddest he'd seen his dad was in the face of Buster's wrath. It was a charming memory to replay, his dad saying he'd not take him back, then doing a full one-eighty to demand he come home. Buster chaffed his dad something awful. He nodded his head, waiting for Buster to continue.

“So if ya get with me.”

“Get with?”

He could see that. If he hung with Buster a lot would happen.

They could roam freely. He could latch a faux collar on the dog. He could win every fight. Things could go smooth. He'd be free to steal twice as much and have company. 

Buster's expression changes making his thoughts stop. “Get with?” He repeated.

It's the third repeat that gets the mix sighing.

“Look, back when you were younger, I saw it in ya, it's still there, ain't it? Yer out here, a wild dog after many times under a collar. Ya feel it, don't ya?”

“Feel.... ?”

He realizes where he's seen that expression, it's been on female dogs, and sometimes males, he knows that face. The look of a dog who wants to be wanted. It makes Scamp step back, think on things. On once upon a time, two years ago, when he did have a slight crush on this dog. A child hoping to one day be in between those strong legs, licked upon the cheek like Angel. He'd hung with Angel hoping to hear Buster's praise sung, and when it hadn't come, she'd distracted him. She'd been interesting in ways he'd never experienced. He'd strayed from that crush, even as his dad was wedging in to tell him Buster was terrible.

Scamp's paws are nothing but fussing, a mess of nerves shooting off in them. “I – you're right. But that was then.”

“Then was two years ago, you were a pup, and I was so raw at your dad, that I-I got stupid.”

He pauses. “This is still a way to get him back, though.”

Buster's side is against him, his tone gentle, and Scamp's leaning into the heat of the male's body, he wanted this before, and that wants small, but sparking back to life. He can ease himself under Buster, and with a trick, repurposed, the male's chest is upon his back, and his head's turned downward to look at Scamp. No anger, fascination, impressed, Buster's shark grin only sends tingles down Scamp's spine.

“I've never... this before... if this doesn't work? Doesn't last?”

Buster's muzzle nudges his. “Then there won't be any anger, on our side of things.” Buster's warm, gentle. Scamp's leaning into it. He's feeling things he's never felt before.

“I – ah – oh. Okay.” 

He can't tell if it's a flutter of passion or genuine feeling. He can't think as his body leans into the licks. He's letting things happen slowly, letting Buster show him. It's a process that turns his mind off and leaves him feeling twisted up emotions. 

His dad's going to be so pissed.

So angry.

But the smile on Buster's face is worth it.

The feelings flickering and rippling into his body are worth it.

After this, when he goes home, he won't be a dog who his dad can push anymore. He won't be the one backing down from fights. Scamp's a new dog. Panting, writhing. He can feel himself changing.

Becoming as Buster had once said to him, years ago.

One of them.

He never knew it would feel this good.


End file.
